Monday, August 25th, 2008
Sketched this yesterday at work. This character is kind of difficult to nail down. I’m trying to find a balance between him being a pompous ass, and still managing to be accessible(sympathetic might not be the right word) to the reader. I also need to find the right balance between him being fashionably hip and attractive, but with an awkwardness that makes it all not really work. That sense that he thinks he’s way more attractive than he actually is. And all this without plunging into caricature.
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
Day off, listening to Cannibal Ox while I juggle cleaning my house and playing with character sketches for the next comic I want to work on, The Yankee. Here is a list of looks that will mesh for the main character: Purple Rain era Prince, Alucard, Stardust era Bowie, Ichabod Crane, Phantom of the Paradise fashion sense, and what I call “dandy black metal”. The only other thing I will say about it is that it involves anachronistic pimp philosophers. This is going to be fun.
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
Been dead artwise since starting a new job, but I’m slowly getting my groove back. Did a consignment RPG character sketch for someone:
Designy fun, this probably looks weirder to others than it does to me. Oh well, I did it for myself, and it’ll look good in the wall of a tattoo shop(my next art show, next month).
I like arrows.
Well, more super than heroic. More like a big, superpowered asshole that can fly and doesn’t know how to do nice things.
Since I can’t seem to finish one page without starting on another one, I don’t have a single page from the comic finished. I suppose finalizing everything will feel lightening quick, but it’s still a very unprofessional habit. So I gotta put something up here, so here’s the page I’m working on now:
Some thumbnail pages out of my sketchbook. I thumbnail a lot, but the amount of detail is hardly consistent. I either stop when I get a good idea of a shot, or get too interested in it, and end up using the more detailed panels to enlarge and trace onto comic paper as a starting point:
This one is a perfect example. I got the right pose I was going for, but it wasn’t the right size in the panel. So I shrunk the borders, and started getting an idea about the background. Scanned, I can enlarge it to 11×17 paper scale. This sort of thing really helps to be able to take in the whole composition… something I cannot do at all drawing at the larger size.
I found a pen in my art box that I bought, must be a year ago: a Tombow ABT double headed marker pen. Decided to play with it a little… and sweet Granny Goodness, I’m in love. I only used the fat end, which creates good variety in line widths because the tip is still super fine. Not sure what the ink is(pretty sure it’s not India), but it’s remarkably black, dries very quickly, and didn’t bleed on my so-so sketchbook paper:
This is a super quick sketch I did, vaguely of the main character for the comic I’m working on right now. I went overkill on the blacks, but I was just playing around with the pen. I likey, and think I’ll be buying a bunch more. I got some good brush strokes out of it which is great, because I still haven’t put forth anytime to learn how to use a proper ink brush.
Cheating!
